Calvin professor of English Gary Schmidt has
collaborated with prominent rabbi and author Lawrence Kushner to produce
In God’s Hands (Skylight Paths Publishing, 2005), a picture book
for children based on a Jewish legend.

“He’s such a huge name in Jewish literature,” says
Schmidt of Kushner, the bestselling author of Honey from the Rock: An
Introduction to Jewish Mysticism and The Way Into Jewish Mystical Tradition
(a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award).

Kushner is also the Emanu-El Scholar at San Francisco’s Congregation
Emanu-El, the visiting professor of Jewish spirituality at the Graduate
Theological Union and a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered.

“His love of scripture as story is really profound for me,”
says Schmidt, himself the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster
Boy, a 2005 Newbery Honor Book and several other books for both young
adults and children.

In God’s Hands tells the story of Jacob, a rich man, and David,
a man barely able to feed his family, and of both men’s individual
experiences of the same miracle: the miracle of the challah (bread) that
keeps appearing and disappearing in a synagogue’s holy ark.

Says Schmidt, “The miracle happens in a way that’s unexpected.
It’s a miracle because these two are enacting God’s will.”

Schmidt originally read the story in one of Kushner’s books and
approached the author about re-fashioning the tale for another audience.

“I thought this could be powerfully written for kids,” he
says.

Kushner, whose writing credits also include two books for young readers,
agreed.

The two also agree that working with a storyteller from another faith
tradition poses some challenges for an author.

“I wrote the first draft,” says Schmidt. “There were
parts that he liked and parts about which he said, ‘It sounds too
much like Fiddler on the Roof.’ I learned a lot, things he would
add that I hadn’t thought of before. I had never written anything
before that I had to compromise so much.”

Kushner amends: “Gary has always been wonderful to work with. A
few times Gary and I realized that, coming from a Christian background,
he had subtly shifted the emphasis in one direction or another from its
original intent. But, as soon as I called it to his attention, he couldn't
have been more responsive.”

Both men worked closely with illustrator Matthew J. Baek, to ensure that
the book’s setting in Israel was faithfully rendered. Both like
the outcome-story and art.

“Gary has taken a very old Jewish tale and brought it back to life
for a new and much wider audience,” Kushner says. “His language
and sensibilities are graceful, profound, spiritual. It's truly been an
honor to work with him.”

Though this is the first time they have partnered on a writing project,
the two authors met each other back in 1998. That year Schmidt and students
from Calvin’s New England Saints interim visited Kushner for lunch
in Sudbury, Mass., where he was serving as the rabbi of Congregation Beth
El in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

“I thought there was a high likelihood that none of the kids at
Calvin had ever talked to a Jewish rabbi,” Schmidt says. “It
was a really, really great time.” Kushner has since participated
in Calvin’s biennial Festival of Faith and Writing.

Talking with a rabbi was not a new experience for Schmidt, who grew up
in a Jewish community on Long Island, New York.

“Judaism was such a huge thing in my life when I was a child,”
he says. “All the stories I would hear, the holidays, all the kids
at school, the neighborhood. Going to Bar Mitzvahs, going to Bat Mitzvahs.
It was huge.”

His childhood immersion in Jewish culture and faith was a powerful motivator,
he says, to re-tell the story of In God’s Hands.

“Here are my own children, who really don’t have that diversity,”
he says “That made me want to give them at least some connection
and experience.”